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Obama Proposes Digital Health Records

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the cuts-both-ways dept.

An anonymous reader writes "'President-elect Barack Obama, as part of the effort to revive the economy, has proposed a massive effort to modernize health care by making all health records standardized and electronic.' The plan includes having all conventional records converted to digital within 5 years. Independent studies are fixing this cost somewhere in the range of $75 to $100 Billion, with most of the money going to paying and training technical staff to work on the conversion. Early government estimates are showing 212,000 jobs could be created by this plan."

5 of 563 comments (clear)

  1. stupid question but..... by Shakrai · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If this can save so much money why isn't the health care industry already doing it? Are they really that stupid or are all the promises of big savings not likely to pan out?

    --
    I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
    We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
    1. Re:stupid question but..... by jamie · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Standardization is one of those things that's good for everyone, but that would not be cost-effective for one player to attempt. When a bigger player (which in this case has to be the government) moves in and lays out standards for everyone to follow, everyone benefits.

      You should be asking not why the industry isn't doing it, but why the government didn't step in a long time ago, to do this and a lot more. Many doctors -- people who have invested more time in training and education than almost any other group in our society -- are spending half of their work hours on paperwork and arguing with insurance companies. The level of inefficiency and waste in American medicine borders on criminal, and it translates not just to massive deficits for taxpayers, but second-rate health care for citizens.

    2. Re:stupid question but..... by Shakrai · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Having these records would make it easier to switch providers

      I don't know if I buy that. It's pretty easy to get your records now. You request them, sign a disclosure and receive them in a few days. Some providers will even copy them right there for you. Perhaps going electronic will eliminate the wait time to have your chart pulled and copied but perhaps it won't. Will there be legislation in place that requires them to give you copies faster? Or will the excuse just change from "we need to photocopy your chart" to "we need to get IT to open up your records for the new provider"?

      There's also privacy issues that need to be addressed. I know people will scream 'HIPAA' at the top of their lungs but have you actually read your insurance contract lately? Yeah, law enforcement/civil parties can't generally subpoena your Doctor to get at your medical records -- but they can and do subpoena insurance companies for billing records, which tell them much the same things. Why that's allowed is beyond me but it is.

      --
      I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
      We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  2. stepping stones to universal health care by viridari · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Getting all of the records into a standardized format is a stepping stone to universal health care. By biting it off in pieces, he's going to be able to make the apparent cost of the transition lower because much of the expensive work will have already been done by initiatives like this.

  3. Re:There is a pitfall though. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Posted anonymously for obvious reasons. I work for a small company that writes claims management and adjudication software for health insurance. Our software actually allows the provider to write their own decision engines using a special language.

    On more than one occasion, we've had client companies, or prospective clients, come to us with requests for features and functionality that would be unethical, if not illegal. You are very correct - the idealistic principle of insurance is that it is a shared risk endeavor. That has been broken down by the insurance co's to a one-sided agenda where they know they have you by the balls and can deny for any reason under the sun, including those that specifically go against the grain of insurance (i.e. if you move to a different provider who provides 'substantially materially similar' benefits, at a separate rate, there should be no waiting period - statistics and probability don't work like that).

    My wife uses chiro services. Non-insurance rate? $45. With insurance? $135. There is something very wrong with that picture, when you know that you are paying $500+ a month in health insurance, it's predominantly YOU paying that. Why not go to a HSA or FSA? Save that money, pay the cheaper rate - the only reason most people don't is for catastrophic coverage - so you'd think that catastrophic coverage only plans would be reasonably cheap, etc? No. Cheap, yes. After you pay some of the highest deductibles around (I've seen $7,500 personal, $20,000 family commonly).

    It's a racket, and though anecdotal, there's something awry when someone whose income is derived from the insurance industry is agitating for universal health care (not that it'd go away entirely, but nonetheless), because as it stands now it is such a fundamentally broken system.